DE Ee a

an

TRUMPED UP SEDITION CHARGE

Sharkey sentenced to three years

Marshall plan
‘stabilization of
miser y, want’

By GINO BARDI

capitalist newspapers for ban-
ning the ACP, Sharkey declared:

“The Communist party and
the great militant unions are a
mighty fortress of the people, a
formidable opponent to the crazy
cliques of warmongers, an invin-
cible enemy of the wage-re-

Laurence Louis Sharkey, gen-
eral secretary of the Australian
Communist party, was sentenc-
ed to the maximum of three
years imprisonment this week
on. a. trumped-up. “sedition”
charge,

» —ROME

A public works plan to absorb Italy’s two million unemployed was
outlined by Giuseppe di Vittorio, general secretary of the Italian General
Confederation of Labor (CGIL) at that organization’s second national

Sharkey is alleged to have
Said, in a telephone interview
with the press last March, that
“if Soviet forces in pursuit of
“@ggressors enters Australia, Au-
Stralian workers would welcome
them,”

Commenting on the persecu-
tion of communists in Australia,
and the frenzied demands of the

ee

ducers, and the very base of
democracy.

“That is the true reason for
the frenzied shouts of the ene-
mies of the people, for the un-
ceasing demand to emasculate

democracy by the outlawing and!
persecution of the Communists;
a criminal adventure doomed by
history to abject failure.”

L. L. SHARKEY

Japan still has
thought control
--U.S. style now

More than 1,000 Japanese teach-
he engaged in union activity or
Pected of left-wing “dangerous

Cughts” have been dropped from

® school system, ostensibly as
att of an economy measure to re-
ice the number of “surplus” gov-
fument employees. These layoffs
owed the pattern in other

Tanches of government employ-
Ment .in which workers elected to}
fovernment posts were ‘the first
be dismissed.

US. occupation authorities are
*Ncouraging the “purge” of the
Schoot system, for which they set
aN example by ordering the arrest
aay army trial of the noted liberal

Tot. Oyama, who spent the war
Years in the U.S. Oyama is charg-

With “making statements detri-
Mental to Allied aims.”

4 Under a Japanese enactment is-
pd early this summer and also
'nctioned by General MacArthur,
fachers in Japan may be discip-
aoed for private political conversa-
oak participating in public dis-

Ssions or even allowing ‘“‘propa-
Sanda songs” to be sung by their

Pupils,

Cansdione ca lethal

Two young Canadians, among the many who have returned
to build the new state of Israel are Dov Chetner, from Calgary,
and Irene Springman, from Winnipeg, pictured here at the Beth

Haaravah settlement.

congress this month.

Di Vittorio proposed that the gov-
ernment create three national ad-
ministrations: One to nationalize
power monopolies and expand elec-
tric power output; a second for
land reclamation, irrigation and
farm reform; and a third for mass
construction of - housing, schools
and hospitals. He said all Italy’s
workers who are idle today are
employable and the country has
plenty of construction materials for
such projects.

Capital, Di Vittorio held, should};

come from landowners, from the
profits of the electric power trusts
and savings deposits. Calling for a
national conference of technicians
and experts to consider such a
program, he promised that the
CGIL would “give every possible

assistance should the government

pledge itself to this plan.”

Di Vittorio’s 5hour report on
CGIL activities outlined the im-
mediate demands of Italian labor:
(1) No more layoffs; (2) all-round
wage increases, fixing of a mini-
mum wage and improvement of
present sliding wage scales; (3)
a 40-hour week; (4) increased un-

‘employment payments and pen-

sions; (5) ‘undisputed recognition
of workers’ factory committees and
joint management councils and (6)
complete freedom to organize and
strike.

Di Vittorio scathingly criticiz-
ed both the Marshall plan and
the Italian government. The
boasted ERP stabilization” of
Italy, he declared, “is stabiliza-
tion of ‘misery and unemploy-
ment which we cannot accept.”
-The De Gasperi government, he
revealed, holds 10,000 Italian work-
ers in jail for exercising their
strike rights and proposes legisla-
tion to hobble trade unions. “Po-
lice methods will not domesticate
the Italian working class,” Di Vit-

-|torio said, warning that “there is

a limit to endurance” and “the peo-

ple will rise” if provoked too far.

Moch defeated

When Jules Moch, French So-
cialist leader, attempted to form

a government following collapse
of Premier Henri Queuille’s cab-
inet over the wage issue created
by devaluation, France’s power-
ful General Federation of Labor
(CGT) called on workers to strike
if he succeeded. As interior min-
ister in the Queuille government,
“Socialist” Moch used troops to
break the French coal miners’
strike last winter. This week
Moch admitted his failure to
form a new government.

—PARIS

‘SOCIALIST’ PRIME MINISTER FILLS JAILS WITH WORKERS

~ Nehru being groomed for Chiang’s role

By ISRAEL EPSTEIN
: Chiang Kai-shek, who boasted
hat he would fight “to the death”
’Sainst the Communists, has fled
. his insecure island stronghold
Taiwan, and with the fall of
leg a quarter of a century of
™upt Kuomintang rule over
hina has ended.
4. 288d with this major defeat in
XS ‘cold war” against world prog-
*S8, Which neither American arms
®t American dollars could avert,
ve imperialism is seeking another
"dev to head its fight to halt
. National liberation struggles in
ey The man Wall Street has
<i is Pandit Jawaharlal Neh-
ae Prime minister of India, now
Siting the U.S. and Canada. (He
ae Speak in Vancouver at the
SMning of next month.)
machru is known to Canadians
ish nly for his years spent in Brit-
in  wls and for his books, written
leggy Socialist-liberal vein. They are
Stine iar with his behavior, do-
le and international, since he
two Me prime minister of India
Zleq years ago. They may be puz-
a fj Why a socialist, a liberal and
ge ter against imperialism was
Try. trom London in President
ag man’s own plane, and greeted
The ©. 2itfield'by Truman himself.
tha, \*Planation, unfortunately, is
ist fehru is no longer a social-
’& liberal or a popular leader.

Me
he

Wehru was once imprisoned for
fighting for freedom. Yet after he
became prime minister’, according
to the New York Times of August
14, 1949, ‘India’s jails held more
political prisoners than they ever
did under the British.”

Those prisoners, held without
trial, are not old enemies of the
Indian people whom a new §s0v-
ernment might be expected to
punish. Most of them are trade
unionists, intellectuals and Com-
munists—the same people the
British used to suppress. They
include the entire elected leader-
‘ship of the All-India Trade Un-
ion Congress, the All-India Rail-
way Union and many other
groups. They were arrested by
the same policemen who once
served the British and now, hav-
ing changed their uniforms, serve
Nehru.

Nehru always spoke a great deal
about socialism. As long. ago as
1931, he introduced planks for na-
tionalization of key industries, land
reform and guarantees of labor’s
rights into the platform of the
Indian National Congress party.

In power, Nehru has sung a dif-
ferent tune. On February 17, 1948,
he declared in India’s parliament
that there would be “no nationali-
zation of existing plants.” He has
fought against division of land-
lord estates without ‘full compen-
sation” to their owners, and has
sent troops to kill peasants who
divided such estates themselves, as

in the Telengana area of the state
of Hyderabad.

’The constitution of Nehru’s In-
dian government even qualifies
the right of workers to form un-
ions, which it says may be re-
stricted “in the interests of the
general public.” To explain why
it suppresses workers’ claims for
more wages, the Indian govern-
ment has declared that it “will
frame policy so as to enable fur-
ther foreign capital in India on
terms and conditions that are
mutually advantageous.”

Nehru has been regarded’ as a
great democrat. His Congress party
always pledged that its constitu-
tion, after India was free, would
be framed by representatives elect-
ed by universal suffrage.

Actually there has been no
election open to more than the
14 percent of the population en-
franchised under the British, who
determined eligibility to vote by
amount of taxes paid, ownership
of property and degree of educa-
tion. Only half of this limited
electorate voted to choose the
men who. wrote India’s present
constitution, which*naturally gives
full protection only to the mon-
eyed minority.

Nehru was always regarded as
a battler’ for full Indian indepen-
dence. Every year, from 1929 to
1946, the Indian Congress party
pledged: “India must sever the
British connection.” Yet on Octo-
ber 11, in an editorial addressing

Nehru as
New York Times listed the follow-
ing achievement to Nehru’s credit:
“He was. able to meet and suc-
cessfully to solve the tricky con-
stitutional problem of how India
was to» become.a republic and still
remain within the framework ° of
the British Commonwealth.”

Why did these things happen to
Nehru? Although Nehru once
spoke of the people’s needs, he
never shared them. One admirer,
Vincent Sheean, has stressed re-
peatedly that Nehru is “an aristo-
crat,” Robert Trumbill, writing in
the New York Times,
how Nehru addresses the people:
“Nehru rails at them and they ac-

cept it with admiration. ... They
have been trained through long

centuries to accept harshness from
above. Nehru, with impunity, has
gone so far as to step off the plat-
form and physically assault per-
sons creating a disturbance any-
‘where near him.”

In short, in fighting against for-
eign rule, men of Nehru’s class
fought for the right to rule and
sweat the people themselves. The
popular slogans they used were
largely a come-on.

Now, when faced with the de-
mands of the poor for a better
‘life, Nehru calls out the army
aod bkegains for foreign aid.
That was Chiang Kai-shek’s his-
tory until his people turned him
out. It looks like it will contine
to be Nehru’s, until India’s people
do the same.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE

describes

“a welcome visitor’ the

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

Wall Street sees in him a Can-
didate for the position vacated
by Chiang Kai-shek, heading a
U.S.-dominated Pacific bloc to
save Asia from “communism”—
and for U.S. exploitation,

— OCTOBER 21, 1949 — PAGE 3